The History of Smart Food

Arguably, what is more interesting than knowing about your food, may be knowing about the history of your food. In this case Smart Food and its parent company Frito-Lay. Smart Food being an ever-popular brand of popcorn snacks with nearly two decades of peddling munchies on the open market, and Frito-Lay (a division of PepsiCo, Inc.) being a longstanding snack food giant and purveyor of such snack hits as Ruffles, Doritos, Funyuns, and the venerable Fritos corn chips.

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Fritos are a good starting point for this brief history lesson, as they were the inspired creation of Texas entrepreneur Charles Elmer Doolin, who purchased the recipe in 1932 for an extruded corn chip (essentially a close cousin to Mexican fried masa) and started manufacturing and marketing "Fritos" or originally "Fritas" (translation in Spanish: fried foods) to Texas locals right out of his mother's kitchen. Soon people started developing a taste for these fried corn chips in 5¢ bags, and with the upswing in popularity, Doolin merged his company with H.W. Lay Company in 1945 to lay (forgive the pun) the foundation for a snack food empire.

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I guess the ironic thing about all of this was Charles Elmer Doolin (who also invented the "Cheeto") was a bit of a food purist himself and health food advocate, not unlike the Kellogg brothers who ran the famed Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan and more famously started the hugely profitable Kellogg's cereal brand. Doolin was the treasurer of the Texas Natural Foods Association and an avid follower of Dr. Herbert Shelton, a San Antonio vegetarian and healer who held innovative, if not controversial, theories about nutrition and fasting. In addition, Doolin even ran for president on the vegetarian ticket (who knew such a thing existed?) in 1956, and in general shunned all manner of junk food, even his own.

But alas, this is a product review about Smart Food Popcorn Clusters and not a true history lesson (at least not by design). My intention in providing a pithy back-story on this long-standing brand was to provide a little context for a product that in itself is not much more than sweetened and fortified popcorn.

With women as its target market, Smart Food is angling to be a sensible snack that is part indulgence and part nutrition and somehow existing "only in a woman's world." Now full disclosure, I am not a woman, but I would like to think I know what women want…in a snack at least, and I could honestly say that Smart Food's new varieties (Chocolate Cookie Caramel Pecan, Honey Multigrain, and Cranberry Almond) are about as enjoyable as you would expect them to be. They hold a nice balance between sickly sweet and pleasantly salty, are fortified with chicory root fiber and calcium carbonate, and come in easy to open little foil packages. As for these being a sensible snack? Well, I think a sensible person would know that something called Chocolate Cookie Caramel Pecan Flavored Popcorn Clusters, with 10 grams of sugar in a single ounce, as well as 75mg of sodium cannot be all that sensible in the grand scheme of things.

Not to be a killjoy, but I would recommend just straight, unembellished, popcorn as an alternative, or maybe even a piece of fruit (for the fiber) or a fistful of almonds (for both fiber and calcium). I am sure the late Charles Elmer Doolin, king of the Frito-Lay snack empire would be in total agreement with me.